


Apt Dreams

by Anonymous



Category: Steins;Gate
Genre: Angst, F/M, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:01:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22343017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: At night, he relives their deaths.
Relationships: Okabe Rintarou | Hououin Kyouma/Makise Kurisu
Comments: 1
Kudos: 38
Collections: Anonymous, Chocolate Box - Round 5





	Apt Dreams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [minium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/minium/gifts).



> I watched Stein's Gate again when I saw it was requested, and though my heart was desperate for some fluff afterward, this bit of angst came to me, and I hope it is to your liking.

* * *

His dreams are full of death.

He doesn’t sleep without reliving them all. Every time he failed to save his best friend, all those violent, painful deaths she endured. Over and over again, she should have gone just as mad as he had trying to save her.

Failure stains his hands red with her blood.

Mayuri’s innocent blood. No matter how many times he watched it happen, it never became easier to accept. He fought against it, going back to change it over and over again, but it still happened.

Until it doesn’t, and someone else dies instead.

Christina.

Makise Kurisu.

He sees her die over and over again, her body lying in a pool of her blood, the feel of it between his fingers as he realizes he’s failed. She’s dead, she died, and he couldn’t save her.

She chose to die once.

He sees that one, too, and somehow it hurts as much as when he himself was stabbed. He wrote her out of existence, chose one life over another. Not just once. More than that. The wreckage that he caused because he was _curious,_ because he believed his own delusions of being a mad scientist.

He doesn’t deserve a world where both Mayuri and Kurisu lived. Who is he to get a happy ending when he denied it to others? He should be suffering, just like this. His dreams are fitting.

Yet when he wakes, shaking after seeing some new horror or a death he’s seen hundreds of times before, there is someone warm next to him. Kurisu pulls him close to her and holds him while he trembles.

She never tells him lies, never says it will be okay. He wouldn’t believe the words anyway. Lying next to her, holding onto her presence, he tries to believe this _is_ reality. He doesn’t deserve it, but she’s here, and if he made a phone call, someone else would be there to answer it.

He doesn’t, he doesn’t ever pick up the phone. Maybe he’s afraid it will shatter the illusion. Maybe he’s being respectful, not waking Mayuri. He’s already woken Kurisu.

Or maybe it’s enough to have her here.

Maybe it never will be enough.

He clings to her anyway.


End file.
